Speculative Fiction—an all-encompassing genre created to describe stories of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and other stories that have an element of “What if...” in them. A story in speculative fiction is one that adds an element of the unreal, or asks, what would become of our society if history took a different direction at some important event? Fiction with a little something extra thrown in.—William D. Richards

Beyond Night by Eric S. Brown and Steven L. Shrewsbury

About Beyond Night:

Beyond Night
is a Dark Fantasy Horror novel that pulls back the veil of nearly two
thousand years of jaded history. Come trod in the bloody footprints left
by monsters, soldiers and wizards and behold what lies hidden Beyond Night itself.

It’s Bigfoot War mixed with Lovecraftian horror on the edge of the Roman Empire.

How
could Rome lose a Legion? What could’ve happened to blot out the
existence of over five thousand men not only from history but the Earth
itself?

As the Legion moves north to engage the
forces of Pictdom, a dark horror emerges from the bowels of the Earth.
Thought to be random attacks by hulking monsters, Decurion August soon
learns a dire truth, that these bloody events are directed by opposing
the wizards of the Picts. While one side assembles all tribes in a
confederated army to battle the Legion, the other pulls these Greyman
beasts from the depths of the Earth.

August fights not only these creatures and workers of magicks, but internal passions in the Legion itself.

Can he discover a way to survive the enormous bloodletting about to take place that will only serve to satisfy the wizards of Pictdom?

Excerpt:

Blood across the
stone slab, blood flying in the air, August saw nothing righteous in this place
of worship.

Dismemberment didn’t evoke nightmares in August Arminius, Decurion
of the Ninth Roman Legion. As a youth, he’d seen tribal leaders in his Germanic
homeland chopped to pieces, either in clan warfare or by the encroaching Roman
forces from afar. Once, in Iberia, he witnessed an attempt to pull a man apart
using four horses, but that operation came off hitched when one animal failed
to run at an equal speed to his kindred. Never, though, had August watched an
arm being ripped loose from a living man. Sliced off with a sword at the
mid-bicep or chopped crudely free with an axe, yes. The sight of one of his
auxiliaries shoved against a standing slab in the stone circle, pinned at the
waist by the huge foot of a monstrous shape and then having his sword arm torn
out of the socket would stick in August’s mind for all time.

August found that he couldn’t blink, couldn’t move, nor even shout
and alert the others in the scouting party near the border of Caledonia. Though
the soldier being mutilated raised his shield in defense, a swiping blow by the
figure in the murky time before twilight downed this action. August’s mind
struggled to reconcile what his eyes told him: That a shape taller than any
man, even a warrior from his native lands, bearing a halo-like outline of white
haze, dominated the scout before him. Froiz was that scout’s name—or Flores as
they called him back in his Spanish homeland that the Romans absorbed him from.

Just a kid, August thought as the young
fighter struggled on and bled badly. Barely twenty years old. How does a twenty-year-old bleed well?

The shape towering over young Froiz—a being from a nightmare, surely
not a man—gave the auxiliary soldier a roundhouse shot to the face with the
dismembered arm. That blow sent Froiz’s helmet flying and it bounced off a
nearby stone pillar. August saw a host of birds, blacker than night, fly from
this stone as the helm flew. As the cloud of birds separated, they revealed two
human forms behind them in the woods. The dying cries of Froiz didn’t make
these grim folk of the woods smile. August named them as Picts, having the skin
and reddish black hair of a breed of savages that lurked by the thousands in
Caledonia. One was a tall man, his hairline far receded, and a flowing white
robe about his shoulders that seemed to mate up with his long ivory beard.
Beside him stood a boy of just a shade over ten years of age, clad in a robe
similar to the old man, but brown in color. They watched the further dying
throes of Froiz as he staggered and fell over a vertically laid stone slab. The
blood of the Iberian pooled for a moment just before Froiz fell off it. August
thought he slipped, but soon noted the bearded man’s hand ran red in the
moonlight, and that his touch had guided him to the earth. These two figures
showed no fear at the sight of the hairy monster in the deep night.

About Eric S. Brown:

Eric S Brown
is the author of numerous book series including the Bigfoot War series, the
Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova), the Crypto-Squad series (with
Jason Brannon), the Homeworld series (with Tony Faville and Jason Cordova), the
Jack Bunny Bam series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand alone
books include War of the Worlds plus Blood Guts and Zombies, World War of the Dead, Last Stand in a Dead Land, Sasquatch Lake, Kaiju Armageddon, Megalodon,
Megalodon Apocalypse, Kraken, Alien Battalion, The Last
Fleet, and From the Snow They Came
to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in
the small press in beyond including markets like the Onward Drakeand Black Tide
Rising anthologies from Baen Books, the Grantville Gazette, the SNAFU Military
horror anthology series, and Walmart World magazine. He has done the
novelizations for such films as Boggy
Creek: The Legend is True (Studio 3 Entertainment) and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (Great Lake films). The first book of
his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature film by Origin releasing in
2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate
was the second of his books to be adapted into film in 2015.Major Japanese publisher, Takeshobo, recently
bought the reprint rights to his Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova)
and it is slated for 2018 release in Japan. Ring of Fire Press will be
releasing a collected edition of his Monster Society stories (set in the New
York Times Best-selling world of Eric Flint’s 1632) later this year.In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes
an award-winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash.” Eric
lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children where he continues to write
tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.

About Steven L. Shrewsbury:

Award winning author Steven L. Shrewsbury lives and works in
Central Illinois. He writes hardcore sword & sorcery and horror novels.
Twenty of his novels have been published, including Born of Swords, Within, Overkill, Philistine, Hell Billy, Thrall, Blood & Cell, Stronger
Than Death, Hawg, Tormentor and Godforsaken. His horror/western series includes Bad Magick, Last Man Screaming and the forthcoming Mojo Hand. He has collaborated with Brian Keene on the two works King of the Bastards and Throne of the Bastards and Peter
Welmerink on the Viking saga Bedlam
Unleashed. A big fan of books, history, guns, the occult, religion and
sports, he tries to seek out brightness in the world, wherever it may hide.

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We are a blog about all things indie science fiction, fantasy and horror. Read interviews with and guest posts by spec fic writers and keep current on news from the SFF world and the latest spec-fic releases.